College Applications
by theyellowumbrella
Summary: On Q's college application, he's asked about any life struggles he has, and he ends up writing over a thousand words about the bitch that is Margo Roth Spiegelman. RATED T FOR CUSSING


**Hi, guys! So, today is my one-year-aversary on FF and I decided to post something. I originally was working on the next chapter of MIA and I was wrapping things up when my computer decided to crash. So, I lost all of my work and I didn't pre-save it like they tell you to in school. So, there's gonna be a delay while I rewrite that. Until then, I present to you my attempt at getting into Q's mindset and him talking about Margo in his college application. I put this under the angst genre, not because it's particularly angsty, but because there are no other fitting genres in my opinion. It's 11:33 pm here, which for me is early despite having a test in algebra tomorrow that I haven't studied for. It might be posted after midnight for me, but happy anniversary to me. Enjoy!**

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Margo Roth Spiegelman. The next-door-neighbour. The girl of my dreams. The mystery waiting to be discovered. A bitch. That's basically the only descriptions I can think of for Margo. I'm writing my college application and the question is "have you had any struggles in life?" and the only thing on my mind is Margo. Mom and Dad said that I had to write about something real, an actual struggle, not a person. I kindly remind them that I almost died looking for Margo and they kindly shut up. Ben called, and him and Radar are coming over to play Resurrection in half an hour. I remember Margo from when we were little. Dad said I should write about the seventy-four mile thing, but Mom said that being with my closest friends would of been a comfort, at the most. Mom said that I should write a story about a struggle with Margo. Mom's expecting me to write about finding Robert Joyner's body and Dad almost getting killed looking for her, I can see it in their eyes. I write about her instead. About her life and everything I know about it.

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When I was about six or seven, me and this girl Margo used to be best friends. We would play together and hang out and back then, I didn't know about paper towns or death by cows or any of the bullshit that Margo was going to put me through ten or so years later. Back then, she was simply Margo, but now, she's Margo Roth Spiegelman. That sounds weird, I know, but it's sort of the only way I can describe her. Margo, although not a normal every-day name like Rebecca or Jen or Louise, is quite a common name. Not weird or unknown like Quentin (she always called me Q). And a common name is used for a common person, or somebody that is normal. Somebody that could fit into a crowd of people easily. But if there's one thing that the small fraction I spent of my senior year chasing a girl who happened to be nonexistent, it's that Margo Roth Spiegelman is not common and is not normal and certainly is not just somebody.

The one thing I remember about her from when we were really young that made me view her as something other than the ideal girl was this: she had this old calendar in her room. That sounds normal, right? Well, it was, I suppose. In a sense, anyway. It wasn't like a secret code had been weaved into the dates, although I'm fairly sure if she had the time, Margo would spend hours on doing that. She was just that sort of girl. I don't know why I'm referring to her in the past tense, she's still alive. We keep in touch, I guess. I mean, it's only the rare email and even rarer text message and almost nonexistent phone calls, but it's something. That's how I choose to look at it, anyway. But anyway, back to the calendar. She hardly ever touched it. Every few months, the page would have turned and maybe there would be a date circled in red marker pen, but that was all. It wasn't a memento or something that she bought at the dollar store. I know that because Margo has and never will be the girl to keep mementos. There were pictures of boats on each page; great big yachts and canoes and sometimes cruises. This was supposed to be about something we struggled with in life, and before you discard this entry, know this: Margo is a struggle. Thanks to her, I can now proudly say I have driven over the speed-limit for twenty-three hours, only taking occasional six-minute stop at a gas station, to some place in New York that wouldn't exist if it weren't for some shitty, run-down barn that had once served as Agloe's General Store. Thanks to her, I have peed in a can of Bluefin and stayed in the same car as it and other bottles of piss that had been sitting there for hours and were starting to get warm due to the sunlight shining directly on it. Thanks to Margo Roth fucking Spiegelman, I have removed the eyebrow of my mortal enemy with shaving cream at three in the morning and then slept for two hours before going to school at seven thirty in the morning.

I have never once viewed Margo the way she does. Not for lack of trying, I'd like to point out. Because she is such a goddamn complex person that has too many layers to even think about figuring out how she views herself. Her complexity is built around the idea that she is something other than a scared little girl who is running away from home and from her problems and actually has the balls to stay away. In a way, I suppose, she is extremely complex and not complex at all. She is simply a girl. She is not some great idea that six-year-old Quentin thought up, or even sixteen-year-old Quentin, she is a girl. She is a girl with boobs and hair and eyes and a nice smile and a hell of a big brain, but she will never be anything but a girl. People disagree with me, of course. They argue that nobody is just a girl and nobody is just a boy and that their personalities define them. Margo is a bitch. Margo is a mysterious, beautiful, soul-sucking bitch that makes you want to chase after her. That makes you fall in love with who she pretended to be, her alias of Margo instead of Margo Roth Spiegelman, and then calls you out on not knowing "the real her." But is there a real Margo Roth Spiegelman? That's the question that runs through my mind when I can't get to sleep at four am. Is there really a Margo behind the complexity, or is there just layer after layer after layer? That thought rather scares me, now that it comes to it. I like to imagine there's a Margo Roth Spiegleman that wears her heart on her sleeve and doesn't send people hunting across the the country for someone who doesn't exist. Margo doesn't exist. I amen't some schizophrenic freak (not that schizophrenics are freaks, but you catch my point), I know what I mean. The Margo that I fell in love with, the Margo that I went after, she doesn't exist. She is a vision in my head, the dream that I never lived. Not properly, anyway.

My friend Ben reckons that there's no layers or complexity to Margo; she is just a bitch. I think maybe my other friend Radar agrees, and part of me does, too. I believe that she claims that she doesn't want people to know her, yet she runs off to the places where she's unknown and changes that. The crushing thing is, is that Margo might be a bitch, but whenever the phone rings, I'm beside it before you can say "Margo Roth Spiegelman" with a looming hope that it's her. And every time I see a different name on the caller ID, my heart sinks just as low as the first time.


End file.
